Re: problems running pdftex on fresh install of mikTex

Greetings Don,

The errmg shown is completely normal to MiKTeX, because you put commands that simply don't belong to the reading language of pdf(TeX): control sequences like \documentclass or \begin are unknown to this engine simply because it's not been built to understand these inputs.

The compiler that effectively reads the commands inside your document is pdf(LaTeX), an extension to the original pdf(TeX) engine, specifically built as a collection of TeX basic macros.

For the sake of coherence, you will get no errors from pdf(TeX) if you compile this document:

Hello, World!
\bye

The reason is that pdf(TeX) is somewhat less structured than the more modern (and highly suggested) pdf(LaTeX), the first one does only need the \bye command: no begin or end or anything else is required.

On the other hand, if you compile this document with pdf(LaTeX), you'll get no errors:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, World
\end{document}

Best Regards,
Andrea L.





Il Domenica 9 Febbraio 2014 3:53, Don Raikes <[email protected]> ha scritto:
 
Hello,



I am new to MikTex, and just installed it on windows7 64-bit.

I added the d:\miktex\miktex\bin\x64 folder to my path, and created the following sample latex file:



% hello.tex

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

Hello World!

\end{document}



When I run pdftex hello.tex, I get some odd errors:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (MiKTeX 2.9 64-bit) (preloaded format=pdftex 2014.2.6)  8 FEB 2014 19:44

entering extended mode

**hello.tex

(c:\hello.tex

! Undefined control sequence.

l.2 \documentclass

                  {article}

? 

! Undefined control sequence.

l.3 \begin

          {document}

? 

[1{C:/ProgramData/MiKTeX/2.9/pdftex/config/pdftex.map}] )<d:/miktex/fonts/type1

/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pfb>

Output written on hello.pdf (1 page, 14011 bytes).

PDF statistics:

10 PDF objects out of 1000 (max. 8388607)

0 named destinations out of 1000 (max. 500000)

1 words of extra memory for PDF output out of 10000 (max. 10000000)



The pdf file is created, but it just seems odd that pdftex would be objecting to basic latex syntax.



Any help would be appreciated.



-- 
Sincerely, Don

HYPERLINK "http://www.oracle.com/" \nOracle
DON RAIKES | Accessibility Specialist
Phone: HYPERLINK "tel:+15202717608"+15202717608 
Oracle JDeveloper Quality Assurance
Arizona 

HYPERLINK "http://www.oracle.com/commitment" \nGreen Oracle

Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the environment


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Managing the Performance of Cloud-Based Applications
Take advantage of what the Cloud has to offer - Avoid Common Pitfalls.
Read the Whitepaper.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=121051231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_______________________________________________
MiKTeX-Users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/miktex-users
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Managing the Performance of Cloud-Based Applications
Take advantage of what the Cloud has to offer - Avoid Common Pitfalls.
Read the Whitepaper.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=121051231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk